Stop 1: Night picnic
When I lived in NYC, I would sometimes organize pub crawls around town to celebrate certain holidays. Halloween was one of them- it was fun to get a bunch of people together and troll the streets dressed in wacky costumes. I really wanted to organize a Halloween pub crawl in Italy, but A) Italians aren’t that enthusiastic about dressing up in public and B) Bars in Italy are super expensive! Pub crawls just aren’t affordable or sensible here.
Florida in the house!
However, I had a stroke of luck right before Halloween when my brother told me he was going to Paris on business. I decided to take a last-minute trip to the city of lights and knew my brother would be up for a pub crawl.
My brother only had free time at night, and he had never visited Paris before. We started our “pub crawl” (aka me and my brother going out by ourselves) beneath the Eiffel Tower with a glass of wine. There were surprisingly a lot of other like-minded people hanging out and drinking in the dark. It was a little too chilly to stay, so after our wine we took the metro to the Oberkampf district (cheap college bar district).
Our first stop was Au P’tit Garage- a fun, divey place that reminded me of the East Village bars back home. The weird thing about this place was the overabundance of Duff beer- everyone was drinking it and labels decorated the walls. I didn’t even know Duff beer was a real thing! My brother also spotted a lone Florida license plate in the corner- not from our county, but that’s OK.
Beer? French fail!
After Garage we headed down the block to UFO, where we saw UFO beer on the menu. I got excited, and told me brother to order a round while I went to the bathroom. When I came back, my brother handed me a fluorescent blue cocktail- WTF? He obviously has problems with his French. Oh well…
After that disgusting drink, we realized it was almost midnight, and the Paris metro closes at 12:30. (Another reason why pub crawls in Europe are difficult!) We decided to head back to our hotel and go to another bar in the neighborhood.
UF Gators!
When we had arrived at the hotel, we noticed a Harry’s New York bar across the street. We had laughed about this, and decided to make the bar stop #4 on our lonesome pub crawl. The inside of Harry’s is completely covered with American college pennants- we saw all of our siblings’ colleges, but couldn’t find me and my brother’s alma mater, University of Florida. We were joking around with the waiters about how the bar couldn’t be complete without a UF pennant, but even though they were laughing, I’m not sure they understood. As we were walking out, we noticed a UF championship banner in a far corner, almost hidden from view. Too bad about the placement, but at least UF is represented!
Roof party in Paris
My brother had an early start the next morning, so we headed back to the hotel. I had the ingenious idea to climb out on the roof outside our window before going to sleep. Going on a roof with no safety rails after a night of drinking was definitely not a good idea, but obviously I didn’t die. Plus we had a great view of the Opera at night!
So, even though my “pub crawl” was just me and my brother bar-hopping, I’m still counting this as a success and marking it off my bucket list. It really made me miss NYC though… I can’t wait to get back and troll the East Village with my friends in January!
